Theology for the Masses

I try to stay out of politics as much as I can.  However, I did leave some feedback on a column over at Worldview Network that I bloged about the other day.  Much to my surprise, it survived moderation and even received two responses.  Since all of this reflects how I see the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of America interacting, I thought I’d copy the discussion here.

My first comment:

How much should Christians be involved in political affairs? I don’t see Jesus or Paul or anyone of the New Cov era getting involved with Rome’s invasions or defense. I wonder (and I am not sold either way) if we followers of the prince of peace should be concerned with advancing and defending America’s political, economic, and cultural power and instead be concerned with showing God’s love to the world though our deeds and actions and rhetoric. What do you think?

First Reply by Lou

JESUS CARED FOR ALL

Are we not to lead all men to Jesus Christ. Would that not include people in the government, people of the government, and people for the government. I try to show the Way of Jesus Christ by all that do or do not do. Jesus was concerned for every single person and died for all. Should I be unconcerned about one group trying to take the property of others or even one group trying to take the life of the poorest and weakest and most innocent of the humans here on this earth. We know that most of these illegal immigrants have a religion that is hostile to true Christianity. Our government is giving this nation away to those who have not shed any blood, sweat, or tears for it. Should we not protect the innocent in this matter. I do care about a van load of children being killed by Mexican trucks that can not even read our signs let alone obey our laws. Lou

Second Reply by John

answer

Well, Christianity is giving. If we say we have love and aren’t involved in the affairs of the world, do we have love? You say Jesus was not involved in the affairs of the world, however, he battled the world, the world systems, and their beliefs. This is why He is hated and why we are to be hated. Jesus also said to give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. He said this because governments are instituted by God and we are to be salt and light, defend righteousness, and be bold. To put this all together, I would say faith and love requires action. As for the USA, we still should defend the good and proactively try to change the bad. The principles of freedom and democracy are biblical and worth defending, bondage (Egypt) is the alternative and the unsaved seek it. John

My Response to John and Lou:

Hey, Thanks for the gentle feedback Lou and John. I appreciate your thoughts.  So, Lou, you rightly say that Jesus cared and died for all.  I think we should very much be concerned about one group taking the lives and livelihood from another group of people.  What I am not sure about is if war with that first group of people is the best way forward.  Why are we upset with one group taking from another?  Because it denies the image of God present in the second group.  Our challenge is to respond to the situation that shows Christ’s love for both the attackers and the attacked.  How do we as citizens of the Kingdom of God help the situation without denying the images of God in the attackers?  Christ loves and died for them as well.  I am not advocating any sort of easy solution, but rushing to defend them through killing their enemies seems to fly in the face of what Jesus advocates.

Lou, you also talk about how most illegal immigrants are hostile to Christianity and suggest that on this basis we keep them out.  (I might be misrepresenting you on this point, so let me know if I am, for that is not my intention.)  Assuming for the moment that this is the case, I love the idea of having people move in around me that are hostile to Christianity, for there are more opportunities to grow the Kingdom of God and help restore interpersonal relationships and to help them get to know their creator and to trust in Him for their salvation.

John, I completely agree with you when you say that we need to be involved in the affairs of this world.  I agree wholeheartedly.  I think we disagree in terms of how we go about doing that.  I see us as citizens of the Kingdom of God first and American citizens second.  As such, I think that Christians as a group and individually should act from our primary membership, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, not America’s Republic.  Jesus did confront the world, but he did not battle it (in terms of physical aggression, that is).  He used teaching, aid, and relationships to transform the world.  We should, as citizens of His Kingdom, employ the same tactics.  We are called to be good citizens, to be sure and God has instituted the governments of America (and Iran and China by the same logic).  But we are to be citizens of God’s Kingdom first and to our local political systems second.  I think (and I could be wrong) that God’s Kingdom would be better served if we acted via God’s Kingdom rather than via America’s interests and methods. 

What do you think?

Perhaps the best argument leveled against Judaism and Christianity is the angry child of a god that people construct out of choice samples of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These criticisms should not be taken lightly nor should the texts they reference be whitewashed. 

To this end, I came across an article via the Codex that I plan on reading tomorrow (for it is 2:11AM and early evening naps should be avoided, no matter how crappy one feels) entitled Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?:The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics which takes a critical look at the claims of the “New Atheists” and attempts to construct and honest and workable Christian reply to such criticisms.  Take a look online via the link in the preceding paragraph, or download the 30 pages of textual goodness in this pdf. 

While you are reading that article, I recommend you also read the one which referenced it over at the Codex entitled Yahweh – a Moral Monster?, which begins a discussion on the Canaanite genocide.

A little while ago, I posted a short bit about Hitchens’ reply to a speech that Romney, a presidential candidate who happens to be Mormon, had given. Wuzzdem had made a nice little parody of Hitchens’ reply that tickled me a bit. During the course of writing that post, I claimed that Hitchens’ had strawman’ed Romney.

Gringo contested this claim in a comment on the post, asking me to clarify how exactly how Hitchen’s strawman’ed Romney.

Notice what Hitchens’ complaint was in the bit that I quoted; [1] it is the claim that God choose to reveal itself to the world via “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.” By doing so, he is claiming how God should be acting. It is one thing to claim divine revelation, i.e. that something has revealed how it acts; it is another to claim that you know, based on reason, that something must act a certain way. Hitchens is casting onto god, as a proof of its existence, the requirements that it act as Hitchens himself would act, i.e. choose another way to reveal itself to the world than how Christians and Mormons claim it has. This is a classic anthropomorphism, the attachment of human qualities onto non-human entities.

Hitchens’ anthropomorphism is especially ironic because Hitchens and the new atheists often criticize the “religionists”** for anthropomorphizing god. Yet, here Hitchens is doing so and uses this to discredit tenets of Romney’s faith. The question is not whether people of faith anthropomorphize god, but that Hitchens himself will only accept a god that is like him.

Having established that Hitchens is anthropomorphizing god, [2] is there a strawman in his comment? I think that there is. His sarcastic attack on the claims of Romney’s faith (and the claims at hand overlap with mine here) is based on how Hitchens’ anthropomorphism, not on Romney’s claim of a revealed God. In order to avoid a strawman, Hitchens must argue from the claims that Romney’s faith makes when he is critiquing his system of thought. That is to say, one must consider the whole of a worldview, not just take potshots here and there. Romney’s faith, and mine, describe a revealed God that consistently chooses those that are powerless, those that are oppressed, to be recipients of His revelation. Therefore, it would come as no surprise to anyone that actually listens to the claims of Mormonism that God would reveal himself to “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.”

Because Hitchens argues against the validity of Romney’s faith on the basis of Hitchens’ idea of what god must be like instead of how instead of actually using Romney’s claims of what God is like, he argues about his opponent’s position without actually using his opponent’s position – classic strawman.

[cross posted at H/J]

1. I am only concerning myself here and in the previous post with the bit that I quoted. Neither here nor in the original post did I claim to do a complete treatment of his reply; it was just something that came to me as I was relying the post from Wuzzdem. However, I do think that this comment is indicative of most of Hitchens’ attacks of Christianity. To put it as Stephen Prothero said, “What Hitchens gets wrong is religion itself.” [↩]
2. Notice that any group given an “-ist” on the end, when the group does not designate itself as such, clearly demonstrates that those receiving the suffix are silly, stupid, and generally unworthy of respect. [↩]

Question of the day (this time with an answer):

How do we, as Christians, conceptualize the Other?

How should we treat these people, both to their face and within our communities while they are not present? They think that they know how to best relate to that which is “wholly Other” – whether it be God, gods, the numinous, whatever you want to call it(s). We think we know how to as well. What do we do with such an impasse? Shall we let loose upon them the canon and be done with it? Do we assume all roads generate the same journey?

A good friend of mine and fellow author here at Theology for the Masses, JR Madill, navigated these very issues a few weeks ago in a talk on Christianity and Pluralism. Now, I don’t want to give away what he had to say, but I do want to say that I found his reply to be quite good and worthy of your consideration.

The sometimes funny WuzzaDem looks at Hitchens’ reply to Romney’s Mormon speech: Shocker: Christopher Hitchens Bashes Mitt Romney Speech.

According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater?

What better way to make this point than by mocking and ridiculing Christians?

I think what I like the most about this quote from Hitchens (the first part) is that he is completely anthropomorphizing God here; something the new atheists are always complaining about theists doing (and rightly so!). God must act in the ways that Hitchens thinks that God should act, or the God that others posit does not match Hitchen’s imagined God and therefore does not exist (is there a man of straw in there somewhere?).

C/P at Hundiejo.com